Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Do Americans Care Too Much About “Smart”?
I’ve been reading with great interest the threads from Salvatore, Ryan and Midge on elitism, meritocracy, and higher education. I discovered them too late to get into the discussion, but I’ll throw in an oar by asking a question: do Americans value intelligence too much? I was recently reading this piece on parenting around the world, which claims that Americans care far more about raising “smart” kids than, say, the Dutch, who actually worry that having a smarty-pants child may be a bad thing.
This is not a foolish concern. Intelligence can be an asset in a wide range of circumstances, but it can also be isolating, and can increase the odds of a person ending up jaded, bored, or insufferably arrogant. In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explains his theory about how higher education allowed the new upper class to get ahead through their smarts, winning the good, brainy jobs that were suddenly more abundant in an information economy. They then took their lavish salaries and formed enclaves of snooty people who look down on the rest of us.
Don’t let Murray’s criticisms draw your attention from the important central claim that those upper-middle-class snobs really are (on average) smarter than most of us. It’s obvious how those social and economic trends might increase Americans’ interest in smarts. Do you want your kids to be rich, popular, and professionally successful? Better make sure they’re brainiacs.
I think there’s a lot of truth to Murray’s tale, though there are plenty of very smart people who don’t end up with Harvard degrees and “super ZIP” mansions for one reason or another. I also think these trends may have distorted the way we think about and value intelligence. Smart people can be useful, undoubtedly. It’s in everyone interests for society to find ways to take advantage of what they can do. But that shouldn’t lead us to undervalue other abilities. A person who scores low on an IQ test may still be gifted in another way, but, more importantly, we shouldn’t suppose that rare and unique gifts are necessary for a person to be valuable to society. Average people can do wonderful things too. They do most of the living and loving and bearing and dying in the world, so we shouldn’t talk as though there’s anything wrong with average.
Once you understand the range and complexity of human personalities and characters, you start to wonder whether there’s really even such a thing as “average.” Meanwhile, even smart people may be burdened by the excessive importance we attach to intelligence. What if they don’t want to be part of the new upper class? I’ve known a few very smart people who fled that path on principle and ended up in a somewhat unhappy place, trying to figure out why they felt mildly ashamed of being as smart as they obviously were.
This, in my view, is a consequence of attaching too much significance to one particular sort of ability. Everyone loses. When smart people underachieve, their intelligence actually becomes a burden, because they tend to feel bored and isolated. It would be better if everyone could take advantage of the opportunities best suited to them and take pride in real achievements (rather than inherited advantages that aren’t really meritorious anyway). Is there any way we could get closer to a world like that?
Published in General
It’s much more important to be virtuous than merely intelligent, but we are so confused about the nature of virtue (which seems to be commonly understood as not much more than avoiding homophobia and racism) that intelligence is about the only human excellence we feel we are permitted to value. And intelligence is a good thing, if it is part of the broader virtue of wisdom (which itself requires the virtues of courage, temperance and justice), but again, we are so muddled about what wisdom really is that we fall back on the simpler (and frankly degenerate) hope of “being smart.” Well, Ted Kaczyinski was really smart. How did that work out?
Don’t know why my paragraph breaks didn’t come through… I’ll try to fix it later (when I’m on my laptop and not a phone).
Couldn’t agree more J Climacus.
Rachel, have you ever read the essay Confessions of a “Smart Kid”: how not to motivate children? It’s about how praising children for raw intelligence (rather than something that’s actually under their control, like working harder) causes children to underachieve:
Takeaway: If you value your child’s intelligence and wish him to make productive use of it, you won’t praise him too highly for it!
Courage. Honor. Duty. Virtue.
These are hardly second-class traits.
In defense of the insufferably arrogant:
As much as a pain in the patoot as they might be to others, those whose reaction to being praised for their intelligence is to become insufferably arrogant may well be more productive than those whose reaction to constant praise is to become terminally insecure about their intelligence.
That said, sometimes the outward appearance of insufferable arrogance is just cover for terminal insecurity about one’s own intelligence.
We need to focus 100 percent on achievement, not potential, which we mortals can never know about each other.
The Dutch worry less about having a smart kid than having that kid stand out too much. The Dutch have a sentiment: “doe maar gewoon.” Directly it translated means “be normal”, but basically means don’t draw attention to yourself. It makes everyone around you uncomfortable. It’s fine being smart, but you shouldn’t brag about it or make anyone else feel bad.
Intelligence not tempered with wisdom can be a dangerous thing, analogous to a gun in the hands of someone not trained to use one.
Intelligence allows for the creation of new ideas. Without wisdom and prudence, intelligence will produce more wrong ideas than right ones. The rationalizations that liberals use to justify their positions require a certain degree of intelligence to construct. Liberal believe that poverty is caused by businesses that create wealth and hire workers, while the solution to poverty is government which creates no wealth and taxes the job creators. It takes intelligence to justify a belief that foolish.
Am I vaguely remembering a post on the absolute necessity of being ruled by the most elite of the educated smarty-pants…?
“The I F—ing Love Science” website is emblematic of the left trying to assert that they are smarter, and therefore they should be in charge. This is something they truly believe, but I also think it is a campaign tactic as well.
Part of what underlies our emphasis on smarts is that we value what smart people do. Like making smart phones.
I’m going to go off a small tangent by pointing out how silly it is that we treat intelligence as a single attribute. We test for it and talk about it as if there is only one form it takes, and a brilliant person will be brilliant at any field of study they might undertake. I know plenty of intelligent people who would have looked quite ordinary had they tried to go into physics. In their current fields they are quite brilliant.
I am reasonably confident that one of the issues we face with our own grown son is that we always praised his smarts as well as his natural athletic abilities, but didn’t do a great job of helping him finding things he could achieve at, then praising him for it. He now seems to assume that the world is his oyster, and simply being in it will produce success. Come to think of it, that’s how I approach life too. Oh man. No wonder I’m so screwed up.
Being smart can mean being really good at an academic subject, understanding what it means to live a good life, or having enough common sense to make good decisions, and probably a lot of other things, too. It certainly doesn’t seem to mean being able to skate by on natural talent without applying effort.
If I had to choose between my children being smart or being nice, I’d choose being nice in a heartbeat.
I can testify to this. I was never challenged in school as a child and developed an aversion to doing homework and studying: didn’t have to to get grades. Fortunately, I came to recognize this and we raised our kids to stress ‘doing the work.’ Coasting is a difficult habit to break.
I don’t know about care too much but definitely care too wrong…
“He’s a genius!” If you want to know how highly we value intelligence, compare that compliment to others.
Many traits individuals take pride in result more from genetics and good parenting than from choices: intelligence, wit, wisdom, resourcefulness, beauty, strength, agility, patience, passion, endurance, daring, etc. Those traits are still worthy of compliment. In traditional understandings of life, we acknowledge that we are defined by our choices but not only by our choices. If a person may take pride in his ancestors and his nation, then he may certainly take pride in his undeserved creativity or humor.
We should be careful not to react too strongly and settle for a strict measure of utility. Human beings are not machines. We cannot be defined solely by usefulness and production.
Intelligence is a tool, but not merely so. It is admirable in a way no hammer or wrench could be. Perhaps it gains this honor from association with greater things. As a builder might say, “This is the hammer that built my home”, a keen mind may compose love letters, schematics, adventures, or inventions. Intelligence is the greatest tool we have.
But Climacus is right. We were created for personal relationships above all. Intelligence is most admirable when employed in the service of virtue.
It doesn’t? Too often it does. Not that it should.
I also think that the left’s emphasis on intelligence, and their lock on the academy, gives them shielding from hard questions. If I can’t understand how tax cuts are a form of oppression, it’s just because I haven’t studied the issues as hard as Paul Krugman or Noam Chomsky. I don’t ask how it is that a company that creates jobs is actually making people poor, because I don’t want to expose my ignorance and low intelligence.
Sorry, I gotta go with The Duke on this one, (from The Sands of Iwo Jima) – Sgt. Stryker: Life is tough, but it’s tougher if you’re stupid.
All other things being equal, go with smart.
The Dutch quote is more about holding yourself back as opposed to living to your potential.
Hey! Why are you picking on me?!
Hate. This.
I want my kids to be extraordinary, and to not be defensive about it in the least. Reaching for the stars means NOT paying attention to all the people who are standing around and ridiculing you for not being normal.
Smart, schmart. There are all kinds of smarts. There’s book-smart: the kind that manifests itself in the coveted Ivy League degree. There’s people smart: the kind that makes for effective upper management. There’s stuff-smart: contractors and engineers. There’s art-smart. There’s money-smart. And there is more or less of each in all of us. Trouble is, our culture tends to regard the first kind of smart as the only kind of smart that counts for school age kids, and we pressure our kids accordingly. I say, fohghettabahhtitt. Kids will find their way with their own unique mix of smarts. Instead of worrying about how “smart” Junior is, focus on being a good example for him, and use your influence to get him to believe he has a duty to be a blessing, not a curse. The world is full of smart kids. Give the world a good one.
Intelligence is admired for the potential it has to benefit others. Only the constructive use of intelligence has benefit, but people like the guy who is likely to make them laugh, intrigue them, invent something useful, or make them richer, simply for that potential. Intelligence is admired for what it can produce, but it can unfortunately be seen as an end in itself. It’s much easier to say someone is intelligent than talk about the impressive thing they did with their intelligence (if anything). You must do something with that intelligence for it to be worthwhile, and that’s how society should view it.
To know is to know you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge. – Socrates
This is a HUGE problem. I’ve probably tested close to 1500 kids and adults for IQ and learning problems, demntia, etc. Everyone wants to know “the IQ score.” Sometimes abilities are so different that the global score is invalid. Other times, deficits in one area (e.g., language) impede someone demonstrating what they know.
However, like many other areas, we value the piece we can measure, whereas other important traits like kindness and good character are much harder to measure consistently.
Son # 1 was obviously gifted from an early age. He taught himself to read before kindergarten and got in the first of many disagreements with his 2nd grade teacher when he wanted to do his book report on Jurassic Park as opposed to on a book from her list.
I had the first of many disagreements with my MIL. when she insisted on praising him for being smart. I would always say that was like praising Only Daughter for being pretty. There’s a reason it’s called “gift”ed. work ethic, discipline and most importantly, values, were things to be praised., not something handed to you on a silver platter.
This is an important point. So often people say “oh, that person (with an average or low IQ) is gifted in another ways. However, brains don’t work like that. Most people aren’t exceptional (top 5%) at anything. As Rachel so ably states, we shouldn’t suppose that giftedness is a given in everyone and certainly isn’t a required trait to be valued as a person.
When my older son was 1, I did a lot of work with developmentally disabled kids. I remember thinking “average is good, I can live with average.” It was a huge value reset for me, that (hopefully) has benefited both kids. But living in the heart of a Super Zip, it’s still easy to get caught up in the IQ worship, and good to be reminded of what’s really important.
Agreed.
Incidentally, what do you make of the claim that praising children too much simply for being “smart” can lead to underachievement?
You’ve often said that nurture wears off by about age 30, but by the time 30 hits, people who specialize in intellectually demanding subjects often feel themselves locked into a particular field and credentialing pathway. If it takes 30 years for the nurture that prompts underachievement to get out of someone’s system, then that could translate into a lot of important risks not taken early in life.